Windows 10 Insider dawdlers face blank screens Oct. 15

Windows 10 users who have not updated their Insider preview since early July have until Thursday to get the latest code or face staring at a blank screen because the PC won’t boot.

All builds issued between Jan. 23 and July 9 — there were 11 builds during that period, numbered 9826 through 10166 — will refuse to boot after Thursday, Oct. 15, according to a revised message posted by a Microsoft support engineer on the company’s discussion forum.

Build 10166 was the last one issued by Microsoft before it rolled out the production code, dubbed RTM for “release to manufacturing,” on July 29. As it approached RTM, Microsoft temporarily stopped releasing Insider builds. It resumed them on Aug. 18.